Baked sweet potato and beetroot

Some days ago I found by chance some sweet potatoes at supermarket, such an unusual thing in my small village! I baked a batch of sweet potato muffins, good but not extraordinary… a few foodblogger friends suggested me to bake them as normal potatoes and to eat them as a side dish. So, the day after I went searching for sweet potatoes again, and there they were! And, oh, look! They were just beside beetroots, the first time I had the chance to find them in the vegetable department just picked up, and not cooked and sliced in a vacuum-sealed pack.

Beetroots are really intriguing! Nice, rustic, they reminds me of earth and fields. And, let me say this, they reminds me of Jamie Oliver… he’s not rustic, not at all, but he uses them often in his recipes, as they are an usual ingredient for English cooking!

So, I had sweet potatoes and beetroot: what to do with them? A colorful and rustic side dish, made precious with a few drops of honey balsamic vinegar.

Ingredients:

sweet potatoes, 6 medium size

beetroot, 3 medium size

red onion, 1

wild fennel, 1 spring

salt and pepper

extra virgin olive oil

Rinse sweet potatoes under running water and cut them into chunks, without peeling them. As soon as you cut them, put them into a large bowl with cold water, to prevent them form gettinug brown and ugly to see.

Peel beetroot and cut them into chunks and put them in a different bowl with cold water to avoid them from reddening sweet potatoes and create a Quentin Tarantino movie! Peel red onion and slice it thinly.

Use a large baking tray and pour some extra virgin olive oil on it. Drain potatoes and beetroot and season them into the baking tray with onion, salt, pepper and a generous splash of extra virgin olive oil. Mix sweet potatoes and beetroot with your hands, then bake them into preheated oven to 180°C for about 1 hour, mixing and turning potato and beetroot chunks time by time with a wooden spoon to avoid them from burning!

Serve as a side dish and season with a few drops of balsamic vinegar, if you like: I used an honey balsamic vinegard, whose bitter sweet flavour was perfect to suit with the sweet taste of potatoes and beetroot.

Have a good weekend! On Sunday we will pick up olives with some friends and I’ll make a very typical bread soup and home made pasta for them, following the suggestions of the chef whose cooking lessons I’m attending now!